About the Book

James Dean to Hopper"I saw what you did today. Today you were great."

Jack Nicholson to Hopper"We're geniuses, you know that?Isn't it great to be a genius?"

The chopper-riding hippie outlaw in Easy Rider. The prophetic madman in the jungle in Apocalypse Now. The terrifying psychopath in Blue Velvet. The kid gone wrong in Rebel Without a Cause. The actor taken under the wing of James Dean who longed to be the next Orson Welles. The hell-raising director who revolutionized Hollywood. An enigmatic man from Dodge City, Kansas, on an endless quest to realize the American Dream.

Dennis Hopper has been described as a rebel, an icon, an addict plagued by demons, and one of the most important champions of the pop-art movement. Friend to Warhol, muse to David Lynch, mentor to Sean Penn, champion of Ice-T, Dennis Hopper built a career that was a half-century of rebellion waged at the edge of American popular culture.

Tom Folsom's Hopper is a wild ride through Dennis's many lives. Featuring hundreds of interviews with Hopper's fellow actors, artists, musicians, and residents of Taos, New Mexico (where he spent much of his most manic time), as well as his ex-wives and many other people who knew him, Hopper takes you on an extraordinary—and sometimes troubling—journey. From Dennis's early days with his grandparents on a dusty farm in Kansas, where he watched trains go by on their way to Los Angeles, to his formative time in Hollywood as one of a bright new crop of actors straddling the edge of the studio system, to the rebellious 1960s and the start of the independent film movement, to the drug-addled 1970s and beyond, when Hopper staged one of the greatest Hollywood comebacks of all time—Tom Folsom has crafted a biography as unconventional as Dennis Hopper himself.

Educator and Librarian Resources

Critical Praise

“Guns, motorcycles, mug shots, drugs, paintings, madness. Even by Hollywood standards, Dennis Hopper led an extraordinary life…Tom Folsom structures Hopper, his book about the man, in a time-bending, sensational style reminiscent of Hopper’s most out-there projects.” — Details

“Tom Folsom tears through the life of Dennis Hopper in Hopper: A Journey into the American Dream.” — Vanity Fair

“Rollicking.” — GQ

“Folsom has neatly framed actor Dennis Hopper.” — Wall Street Journal

“Mr. Folsom plays the part of [Hopper’s] spiritual medium, taking us through each chapter of the Kansas-born, James Dean-worshipping, psychedelic psychotic’s life, describing exactly what was going through the mind of the semi-tragic American almost-hero at each juncture.” — New York Observer

“Folsom carries the reader on a caffeine-and-other-substance-fueled ride.” — New York Post

“Fortunately for him, Dennis Hopper has gotten the biographer he deserves. Which is to say, Folsom’s gonzo prose pulsates with Hopper’s manic energy and fits his madness like a glove.” — Peter Biskind, New York Times bestselling author of Easy Riders, Raging Bulls

“Tom Folsom’s Hopper is an electric and rollicking, tour de force profile of Hollywood’s great outlaw chameleon. All the wild-eyed stories and high-octane pathos in these pages make me miss the edgy, ‘grand artiste’ Hopper anew. A knockout book!” — Douglas Brinkley, New York Times bestselling author of Cronkite

“Dennis did a lot for motorcycling with his movie Easy Rider. Folsom has written a book that shows Dennis’s life like it was: crazy but brilliant.” — Ralph “Sonny” Barger, author of the New York Times bestseller Hell's Angel and former head of the Oakland chapter of the Hell's Angels

“Essential reading for anyone interested in Dennis Hopper, the explosive sixties, Hollywood, American cinema, and the art of the twentieth century. But watch outthis visceral book puts you right in it, and some of it is jaw-dropping.” — Philippe Mora, director of Mad Dog Morgan, starring Dennis Hopper

“What a terrific book about Dennis Hopperhe would have loved it and hated it. Beautifully written, stunningly accurate, Hopper captures all the wonderful and terrifying contradictions of the sweet, sad, funny, angry, and loving man that was Dennis.” — Henry Jaglom, actor, playwright, and director of Tracks, starring Dennis Hopper

“Dennis Hopper was unlike any human I’ve ever met: consumed with passion for his subject, aesthetically brave, yet possessing a gentle heart. Though I would have said it couldn’t be done, Tom Folsom has captured the real Dennis.” — Karen Black, actress and Dennis Hopper's costar in Easy Rider

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